Husted plans to tackle election issues

By MARC KOVAC Dix Capital BureauPublished: January 11, 2013 4:00AM

COLUMBUS -- Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted plans to direct county election boards to offer a forum for residents alleging incidents of voter fraud, with referrals to prosecutors when warranted.

Husted wants locally controlled process for reviewing "substantiated allegations of fraud and suppression from this past election, providing a forum for those with legitimate concerns and a process for looking into them."

He added, "I believe this will help reassure the public about the integrity of our elections process. ... We're going to get it right. We're going to give them a forum ... and give them a chance if they have a concern to go in and air them."

Husted announced the coming directive during the winter meeting of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials in Columbus Wednesday afternoon, where he also offered a recap of the November presidential election and a preview of issues he'll be advocating in the new year.

The speech came on the same day that Husted's office released final statistics on provisional and absentee ballots cast and counted in November.

Close to 1.8 million Ohioans opted to cast absentee ballots this past cycle, up from 1.7 million during the 2004 presidential election.

And 208,000-plus cast provisional ballots on Election Day, generally for failing to have proper identification or in cases where their eligibility was questioned. Of those, 173,765, or 83.5 percent, were counted.

Among topics Husted expects to tackle in coming months:

- Federal issues: Husted said he would advocate on local elections officials' behalf on two federal issues.

He said he would push for full funding of voting machines mandated by the federal government.

"Like most federal programs it was initially funded, but now 10 years later, the machines are aging, they need maintenance and at some point in time, will need replaced...," he said. "... Either provide the funding or remove the mandate and return the matter to the state and local governments."

Husted also said federal officials need to fix contradictions in law related to voter rolls that prevent the removal of voters until they have been inactive for consecutive elections.

"This resulted in the problem that some Ohio counties had more registered voters than it has voting age adults residing in the county," he said. "We got no help from the justice department and now I intend to ask the secretaries of state from all 50 states to join us in asking for a resolution to these questions."

- State Issues: Husted urged lawmakers to include a number of initiatives in any election reform legislation they intend to introduce, including allowing online voter registration and online absentee ballot requests and setting uniform early voting hours.

The latter was a point of contention during last year's presidential election, as Democrats criticized Husted for not allowing more weekend voting or longer hours for voters to cast ballots before Election Day.

"For reasonable people, there is nothing controversial here," he said.

Marc Kovac is the Dix Capital Bureau chief. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.